1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a survey system and apparatus for evaluating the results. More particularly, it relates to a remotely accessible system for the collection of employee or non-employee survey responses to quantify various criteria relating to the operation of an organization.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In an increasingly competitive marketplace, business entities strive to improve leadership, quality, customer satisfaction and other criteria that directly or indirectly relate to the ultimate profitability of the enterprise. Empirical evidence has established that business operations that excel in distinct and measurable attributes are far more likely to be profitable in commerce. As an example, the xe2x80x9cBaldrige Indexxe2x80x9d is made up of publicly traded U.S. companies that have received the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award during the years 1988 to 1996. The Secretary of Commerce and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (xe2x80x9cNISTxe2x80x9d) were given the responsibility, under Public Law 100-107, to develop and administer the Award with cooperation and financial support from the private sector. NIST xe2x80x9cinvestedxe2x80x9d a hypothetical 1,000 in each of the six whole company winners of the Baldrige Award. The investments were tracked from the first business day of the month following the announcement of award recipients (or the date they began public trading) to Dec. 1, 1997. Adjustments were made for stock splits. Another 1,000 was hypothetically invested in the Standard and Poor""s Index 500 (xe2x80x9cSandPxe2x80x9d) at the same time. NIST found that the group of six outperformed the SandP 500 by more than 2.7 to 1, achieving a 394.5 percent return on investment compared to a 146.9 percent return for the SandP 500. Therefore, it is desirable for an organization to administer periodic assessments of its operations.
The detailed assessment of a business operation is often a difficult, expensive, and time-consuming task. Typically, upper level management may knowingly or inadvertently affect the accurate measure of information gathered for the assessment. Outside consultants are often employed to interview and observe the operation of the enterprise on-site. However, management may wish to influence the data for a number of reasons. Upper level management may be greatly affected by the results of the evaluation and may attempt to direct the outside consultant only to well performing operations, shielding problem areas from discovery. In addition, the outside consultant may interview subordinate employees in the presence of their supervisor. This creates a poor environment for gaining candor from the subordinate employee on potential areas of improvement that are the responsibility of the supervisor.
An evaluation by an outside consultant may require the consultant to travel to different geographical locations to assess a large operation with continuity. The consultant may also require the employee to stop productive work to allow time for the assessment interview. It is time-consuming for an independent consultant to conduct individual employee interviews, record the data, and assemble the information into a useful form. Furthermore, should a business wish to conduct periodic evaluations, there is no guarantee that the same consultant will be available. Therefore, the company cannot be assured that the next independent assessment performed will have the same consistency. Nor is there any assurance that secondary evaluations will produce meaningful results comparable to previous exercises.
Should the company attempt to apply known economic principles to an xe2x80x9cin-housexe2x80x9d self-assessment, there is the potential that more harm than good may come from the endeavor. Many organizations begin the process of self-assessment with a shallow understanding of the performance criteria sought or the optimal method in which to gather the information. This self-assessment suffers from an inseparable relationship between the company""s own evaluator and the upper management that may exert influence, not only on the examinees, but also on the examiner.
Previous attempts have been made to provide business-related surveys such as described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,551,880 to Bonnstetter et al. (the ""880 patent) which is incorporated herein by reference. The ""880 patent describes a system for predicting the potential success of an individual for a particular job or task. A survey is conducted wherein the employee or potential employee submits information on behavioral and value preferences. The information is then analyzed and compared against standards for behavior and values previously resolved for specific employment. In a preferred embodiment of the ""880 patent, the behavior and value questions are administered through software and evaluated via a predetermined algorithm. However, the system analyzes the individual employee and not the business entity as a whole. Nor does the ""880 patent describe an independent party to administer the survey to ensure confidentially, honesty, and a full disclosure of the employee""s perceptions of the business entity.
Therefore, there is a need in the art for a method and apparatus to provide a reliable self-assessment survey process that can be easily administered and scored with the accuracy and completeness of a well developed written narrative self-assessment.
There is a further need in the art to integrate existing telecommunication technologies to avoid the time and labor intensive ordeal of the paper and pencil process or other traditional means of survey administration. This would allow the database of both individual responses and cumulative data to be completely external to the organization being assessed.
There is a further need in the art to provide confidentiality to organizations and their employees participating in the survey. This provides a distinct opportunity to benchmark the data to industry peers and to provide the objective assurance that all data is accurate and verifiable by a reliable survey administrator organization.
However, in view of the prior art in at the time the present invention was made, it was not obvious to those of ordinary skill in the pertinent art how the identified needs could be fulfilled.
The present invention solves significant problems in the art by providing a telecommunications infrastructure that supports the efficient, confidential and accurate measure of performance criteria relating to the performance of an organization. A predetermined set of performance criteria are measured by the use of an automated employee and non-employee interview system whereby recorded responses are stored in a database which is utilized for a quantitative evaluation of various aspects of a business enterprise.
The present invention comprises an array of survey questions for evaluating a plurality of predetermined criteria relating to the performance of an organization. A survey administrator controls a data-gathering interface means for employees or non-employees of the business to confidentially record answers to the survey questions. For each individual employee survey, the data-gathering interface records the employee""s identification, their job classification and a business identifier. Pertinent data is also collected for each non-employee participating in the survey. The data-gathering interface may comprise an Internet web server, a touch-tone telephone entry system, a paper and pencil system that compiles the answers by scanning them automatically, and other existing or to-be-developed interface means as well. For example, an additional data-gathering interface means could be provided in the form of a personal computer having appropriate software. A respondent could save his or her survey responses on a diskette and mail the diskette to the survey administrator, or email the responses to the survey administrator as an attached file. This would enable a respondent to prepare answers and send them to the survey administrator while the respondent is on a flight, on the road, or otherwise away from a permanent office environment.
The survey administrator maintains a database of the responses to the survey questions and has the ability to archive past response data. The survey administrator then applies a selected formula to the survey data to evaluate the performance of the organization and produces a quantifiable result based on a plurality of business categories.
In a preferred embodiment, an organization wishing to evaluate the performance of various key aspects of its operations selects one or more business performance models. Each business performance model is measured using predetermined questions for employees of the business. A survey administrator performs the administration of the predetermined questions so that confidentially in the interview process insures candid answers to the questions. In one embodiment, responses to the questions are gathered utilizing an Internet web server and are stored either locally on the server or at a remote location for the survey administrator to later compile and analyze. The web server provides the opportunity to quickly and efficiently gather information, particularly where various offices of an organization are separated by substantial geographic distance. The web server also may operate 24 hours per day at relatively low cost and permit a plurality of employees to enter in responses at the same time.
In an alternative embodiment, a telephone system utilizing dual-tone multi-frequency (xe2x80x9cDTMExe2x80x9d) input provides a means for employees to confidentially record information relating to the performance of a company. The DTMF entry has the advantage of not requiring the employee to have a machine capable of accessing the web server over the Internet. Using DTMF entry, the employee logs on using a code provided by the survey administrator. Once within the telephone system, pre-recorded questions are audibly played to the employee. At the conclusion of each question, the employee is prompted to record their response by depressing numerals on the telephone.
In another embodiment, non-employees participate in the survey as well. However, the questions propounded to non-employees may differ from the questions propounded to employees.
The data is readily compiled into a useable database format. At the conclusion of the data gathering stage, the survey administrator can easily analyze the recorded information and produce a report to the business entity evaluating the entity based on the pre-selected business performance criteria desired. Furthermore, the operation of the invention is highly reproducible and consistent. A baseline assessment can be repeated over time, allowing the organization to track quantifiable results and improvements.
It should be noted that the current invention has a wide range of applications which may include health care accreditation, educational institution assessment, and similar tasks. For example, the current invention may be applied to a Performance-based Organizational Effectiveness and Efficiency Tracking Program (xe2x80x9cPOETxe2x80x9d) wherein the organizational effectiveness and efficiency of child welfare organizations are measured in addition to performance indicators essential to success in a managed care environment.
An advantage of the invention is that a complete assessment of a large corporation may be completed more rapidly and efficiently than using independent consultants that interview onsite. The reduced costs and speed permit a business to conduct more frequent performance evaluations that can be utilized to operate the business more profitably.
Another advantage of the invention is that employees of the business are provided with the opportunity to submit honest and candid answers to potentially sensitive questions. Because the opportunity for external influence to affect the employee""s response is curtailed, the final evaluation of the business entity is more likely to uncover problem areas in its operations that may be subsequently improved.
Another advantage of the invention is that the infrastructure of the evaluation is highly consistent over time. This permits the business entity to periodically measure itself against previous assessments.
These and other important objects, advantages, and features of the invention will become clear as this description proceeds.
The invention accordingly comprises the features of construction, combination of elements, and arrangement of parts that will be exemplified in the description set forth hereinafter and the scope of the invention will be indicated in the claims.